Down Under Flix

Published 2019 on Down Under Flix Sunday Too Far Away Director:  Ken Hannam Stars:  Jack Thompson, Max Cullen, Robert Bruning, Jerry Thomas Sunday Too Far Away , directed by Ken Hannam ( Dawn! ), opens with one of the most iconic scenes in Australian cinema, in which a car flips and rolls off a dusty outback road and protagonist Foley (Jack Thompson) crawls out from under his crashed vehicle. It’s an introduction befitting of and analogous to Foley, a character who’s his own worst enemy, who manages to wearily scrape through life while flirting with self-destruction. 

Published 2019 on Down Under Flix Director:  Marion Pilowsky Stars:  Emily Taheny, Eddie Izzard, Luke McKenzie, Vanessa Guide Marion Pilowsky’s 2018 comedy  The Flip Side  stars comedian Eddie Izzard as Henry, a British actor on the ascent. Five years ago while shooting a film in Adelaide he had a romantic fling with set caterer Ronnie (Emily Taheny). Now a restaurateur with a struggling business and a flaky novelist boyfriend Jeff (Luke McKenzie), Ronnie is surprised to be contacted by Henry, visiting town to promote his new movie. A love quadrangle of sorts forms between Henry, Ronnie, Luke, and Henry’s French girlfriend Sophie (Vanessa Guide) as they embark on a road trip together and Henry attempts to win back Ronnie’s affections. 

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix On Sunday 11 November (Remembrance Day) at 11am, pay tribute to those who have died in military combat through a minute of silence … Director:  Mel Gibson Stars:  Andrew Garfield, Vinge Vaughan, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Teresa Palmer Last month I reviewed  Bruce Beresford’s  Black Robe , and it got me thinking about depictions of Christianity in Australian cinema. In Hollywood’s heyday, Biblical epics were a genre unto themselves and a commercial force not unlike today’s superhero films; indeed, adjusted for inflation,  The Ten Commandments  and  Ben-Hur  are among the most successful films of all time, far out-grossing anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beyond that genre, classic Hollywood depictions of Christianity were heavily informed by the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially known as the Hays Code) which prohibited ridicule of the clergy or de...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Bruce Beresford Stars:  Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, August Schellenberg, Tantoo Cardinal, Sandrine Holt In my mind, the past 40 years have yielded three masterful English language historical films about thwarted attempts by Jesuit missionaries to spread Christianity to new frontiers. Those three films are Roland Joffe’s 1986 film  The Mission , set in South America in the mid-1700s; Bruce Beresford’s 1991 film  Black Robe , set in Canada in the 1630s; and Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film  Silence , set in Japan around the same time. These films have experienced differing receptions: Joffe’s film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was nominated for seven Oscars, and its Morricone score still pervades popular culture; Beresford’s film won a smattering of Canadian and Australian film awards, as well as the Golden Reel Award for highest grossing Canadian film that year, but didn’t exactly set the world alight (later G...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Dean Semler Stars:  Howie Long, Suzy Amis, Scott Glenn, William Forsythe Some of the best-looking films produced in Australia have had Dean Semler working behind the camera. Hoodwink ( reviewed here ),  The Road Warrior ,  Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome ,  Razorback ,  The Lighthorsemen , and  Dead Calm  all carry Semler’s imprint as cinematographer. On taking his trade to Hollywood, Semler scored an Academy Award for his stunning work on 1990’s  Dances with Wolves , and since then he’s chalked up a downright eclectic CV. Over the last three decades he’s worked on popcorn flicks ( XXX ,  2012 ,  Maleficent ), broad comedies ( The Nutty Professor 2 ,  Bruce Almighty ,  Get Smart ), period films with a smidgen of prestige ( The Power of One ,  We Were Soldiers ,  The Alamo ,  Apocalypto ,  In the Land of Blood and Honey ), pulpy thrillers ( The Bone Co...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Rolf De Heer Stars:  Colin Friels, Miles Davis, Helen Buday, Joe Petruzzi This month is AUSgust, a month devoted to Australian film appreciation masterminded by  The Curb ’s Andrew Peirce. You can  read about AUGgust   here   and follow along on social media using the hashtag #AUSgust. The work of Rolf De Heer is the theme for Day 2, so here’s a review of De Heer’s 1991 film  Dingo . You can also read my take on De Heer's The Old Man Who Read Love Stories here . In a 2003 book advocating against dodgy grammar, Lynne Truss shows how an innocuous description of a panda (“Panda: eats shoots and leaves”) can be warped into something more sinister with the introduction of an extra comma: “Panda: eats, shoots and leaves”. Grammar quandaries aside, that phrase “eats, shoots and leaves” always struck me as an apt description of Australian filmmakers who shoot some features locally before leaving for int...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Paul Cox Stars:  Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Julia Blake, Terry Norris, Chris Haywood, Norman Kaye Director Paul Cox’s final work, 2015’s  Force of Destiny , opens with a title card dedicating the film to two departed collaborators: actress Wendy Hughes – star of the  superb  Lonely Hearts  as well as  Kostas ,  My First Wife ,  Lust and Revenge , and  Salvation  – and Oliver Streeton, art director on  Human Touch  and title designer on that film,  A Woman’s Tale ,  Innocence , and  The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky . This dedication, combined with the film’s subject matter – dramatising Cox’s own brush with liver cancer – and the fact its director died just a year after its release, casts a shadow of mortality over the filmmaker’s swansong effort. Having said that, Cox grappled with matters of mortality throughout his whole career.